Page 59 - Till the Last Breath . . .

To her surprise, Arman had replied almost immediately. The language of

the mail suggested he was impressed, but it was cleverly concealed. It was
late in the night and Pihu typed out a long mail. It took her four hours to
type it, one slow clumsy letter at a time. She had to take breaks because it

was hard for her to sit up straight for that long. She didn’t forget to mention
that in the mail. Minutes after she had hit the send button, exhausted, she

crawled to her bed and drifted off.
The next morning, the first thing she did was to log into Gmail and

refresh it till her fingers hurt. Inbox (1). The mail contained just one line. It
was a link to a website and beneath it was a combination of letters, numbers

and special characters. She clicked on the link, which took her to a
zealously protected website, and punched in the combination in the field
that asked for a password. The website opened up like a whore’s legs on a

payday and lay open a world of information on her disease. In the next few
hours, she had devoured whatever she could find on the website. What

really grabbed her attention were the clinical trials GKL Hospital was
carrying out on ALS patients. They were only moderately successful. Just

as she was reading through it, she received another mail that explained how
she was ineligible for it.

Dr Arman Kashyap <ArmanKashyap@GKL.co.in>
To Pihu Malhotra <p_malhotra198@gmail.com>

I am sure you have gone through the clinical-trial reports.
Unfortunately, you’re not eligible for it. Section 5. Para 6. I apologize.

Regards

Dr Arman Kashyap

Pihu looked for Section 5. Her face drooped. Since it was a disease which

only inflicted older people, clinical-trial permissions had not been granted
for anyone below the age of thirty. She had slumped in her chair and

switched off the computer. She was tired.